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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

難

nán
difficult; hard; troublesome
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 5
  • TOCFL 1
  • radical 隹
  • 19 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
  • sound component
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *n̥ʰaːn, *naːns): abbreviated phonetic 暵 (OC *hnaːnʔ, *hnaːns) + semantic 隹 (“bird”) – a type of bird. Phonetically borrowed for other senses.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mV-nar (“to suffer”).

Cognate with Tibetan མནར (mnar, “to suffer; suffering”), and possibly (via homophonous root merger) also Burmese နာ (na, “to suffer pain, to be ill”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*mV-nar “to suffer”
  • soundChinese暵 “to dry by exposing to the sun”
  • meaningChinese隹 “short-tailed bird”

Related: Tibetan མནར, Burmese နာ

Meanings

character
  1. difficult; hard; troublesome
  2. bad; unpleasant
  3. to feel difficult; to find difficult
  4. to make things difficult for; to put someone in a difficult position
  5. difficulty; something which is difficult; issue
  6. 79th tetragram of the Taixuanjing; "difficulties" (𝍔)

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 災禍。 例：災難、大難臨頭
  2. 叛亂。 例：發難、兵難
  3. 質問、責備。 例：非難、責難、問難

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 難 was written 字形演變

  1. 難 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 難 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 難 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 難 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 難 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 難